People, with their natural teeth, normally brush regularly to maintain healthy teeth and gums. There are two principle aspects to consider one being the pressure applied to the teeth and the other the motion imparted to the brush during brushing. Both of these aspects are influenced by the toothbrush handle design.
One problem, common to many, is that too much pressure is applied to the teeth and gums during brushing. Too much pressure can cause, or contribute to, all kinds of dental problems such as recession, abrasion, loss of periodontal ligaments and/or loss of cementum and bone. Once the roots are exposed the teeth can become sensitive and the exposed roots are vulnerable to root decay. Gum recession also occurs.
Tooth brushes presently on the market are available with soft or ultra soft bristles, but this does little to alleviate the foregoing problems because the handle designs are conducive to applying heavy pressure during brushing. Specifically, the handles are long and because of their length, they are gripped in such a manner that results in high leverage to apply force to the bristle, i.e. head end of the brush.
Commonly the long handles are grasped by wrapping all of the fingers, on one hand, around the handle, i.e. a strong grip. With this grip heavy pressure can be applied without it being realized by the user how much pressure is actually being applied.
A long handle also extends beyond the finger grasped portion in a direction toward the wrist region. The projecting end of the handle engages in proximity of the wrist region or near the rear extremity of the hand and this engagement serves as a fulcrum for applying heavy pressure to the bristle end of the brush. As mentioned before, this heavy brushing pressure can be detrimental causing irreversible damage to the gums and/or teeth.
Turning to the other aspect it is difficult with existing toothbrush handle designs to impart a proper brushing motion during use. The motion employed normally is one or more of gum to tooth, modified bass and Steilman.
One purpose of brushing is to remove particulate material from between the teeth. The existing up and down brush motion employed, particularly along with high pressure applied during brushing, can be very damaging. The up and down motion particularly can cause gum recession and/or unknown to the brush user, force particulate material under the gum. The up and down motion normally each go from gum to tooth and tooth to gum, the latter of which is undesirable.